Adapted Quote by Edward Gibbon

Human character is smaller now, people don't have durable passions; they've replaced passions with excitement.

— Saul Bellow

Positive emotion alienated from the exercise of character leads to emptiness, to inauthenticity, to depression, and, as we age, to the gnawing realization that…

— Martin Seligman

Enthusiasm is followed by disappointment and even depression, and then by renewed enthusiasm.

— Murray Gell-Mann

Our passions are like convulsion fits, which, though they make us stronger for the time, leave us the weaker ever after

— Alexander Pope

There is no human being who having both passions and thoughts does not think in consequences of his passions--does not find images rising in…

— George Eliot

There is a melancholy which accompanies all enthusiasm.

— Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury

Character is the impulse reined down into steady continuance.

— Charles Henry Parkhurst

With passions stilled and one's nature firm, all destinies are in harmony; When the full moon of contemplation is reached you will be pure.

— Wu Cheng'en

It is a mistake to imagine, that the violent passions only, such as ambition and love, can triumph over the rest. Idleness, languid as…

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Every time a resolve or a fine glow of feeling evaporates without bearing practical fruit is worse than a chance lost; it works to…

— William James

An author who waits for the right 'mood' will soon find that 'moods' get fewer and fewer until they cease altogether.

— Vera Brittain

“There is something in obstinacy which differs from every other passion; whenever it fails it never recovers, but either breaks like iron or crumbles…

— Anonymous